


And All Your Roads Lead To This

by moonwalkingdead



Category: Walking Dead, Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-01
Updated: 2014-10-01
Packaged: 2018-02-19 12:04:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2387648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonwalkingdead/pseuds/moonwalkingdead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He will understand it someday. That all this shit he had to go through growing up, it's for this moment right here. For her. Implied Bethyl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And All Your Roads Lead To This

**Author's Note:**

> Still working on RP. The reunion scene won't fucken' cooperate with me and have left me so damn frustrated, I was able to write this instead. Yeah, I know. My muses have a really bad sense of humor.
> 
> I'll probably continue this someday, make it more than a oneshot, but until then, I give you this. 
> 
> Bye now. *goes back to RP*

He can't really remember when he stopped believing in a higher power. Must have been around six, seven maybe? Pretty young and well, _too young_ really. He doesn't remember, wishes he can, but to recall would require going back to this dirt path with a sign that points home. He'd rather not return, see the memories tucked away inside that cabin of theirs if he can help it. It's much too painful you see, to traipse down that treelined street and into his junkyard childhood with its belts and broken bottles and constant mantras of _you useless piece of shit._

But it would have been an important day, real vital. A realization like that, it's an epiphany is what it is, albeit a little backwards. It even sounds philosophical and shit when you put it this way:

_Little boy blue is alone in the universe and can't rely on anyone else but himself._

If it's worded like that, well damn it if it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. What would a boy like him think, picking himself up after every beating with no help at all save from his own aching limbs? 

There's no higher power, not in this hell of a home he grew up in. He even has the scars to prove it, but you won't see them. Not all are on his back, after all.

..

The paved route that winds all over and around the years that make up his adolescence contains some of the most colorful memories of his life. But don't get him wrong, it's not the vibrant, happy kind of colorful. His teen years are splashed macabre, crimson red and dark purple and greenish and fading yellow in the form of split lips and bleeding noses, black eyes and bloody knuckles. 

Fighting, a whole lot of fighting. And this theory of his, the absence of a higher power, it's just proven further as he brawls and fights and bleeds but for absolutely _nothing_. Nothing of much importance, anyway.

_Little boy blue is in a universe with others who are as alone as him, relying on themselves in the same way he relies on himself._

Out on the streets, he quickly learns that a higher power is either him or them: someone who conquers everyone else, beats them to the ground, looks terrible for it after, but will still be able to say: _ya should see the other guy._

There's no higher power in the omnipotent sense, not in this world that is just an extension of his home; a bigger, badder kind of hell. The only kind of power he knows is earned with every well-placed punch, one fight at a time.

Self reliance, y'know.

This time, he's the one giving away scars. He's got enough to last several lifetimes thanks, and it's time for everyone else to get their own.

..

Adulthood is oh-so cruel, a _double_ and _triple_ and _quadruple_ serving of the best of all hells when you're already at the prime of inferno living. But it's nothing he can't handle. 

Been there, done that. 

And he's still taking the same old roads he's taken, only he's older and knows which way to go (or not to go) better. He's like a war veteran here with his scars that won't really go away, especially the ones eyes can't see. 

Their ache is duller now, except on some days.

And there's no higher power to be found still, just him with his recollections of scarring people left and right. Fighting now, it's just to practice or feel alive, no longer the power trip it was once before. And there's still nothing important to fight about, but after you've used up every reason to throw a fist, you just come to a realization. 

Do you really need reasons anymore? 

_Little boy blue is still alone in this universe._

There's just so much time to think about how lonely he really is all of a sudden and after all these years, even while trying to make ends meet working shitty jobs, drifting around with his brother, drinking booze, and smoking cigarettes. 

_(Stop. Rewind.)_ Living without living at all, on a loop. 

He doesn't say this lightly, but it's true anyway: even hell gets boring once you get used to the flames. Lonely too. Lonely and boring, the same landscape over and over whether he's stealing a ride on Merle's bike or driving his trusty old truck. 

He's been on these roads all his life, just keeps going in circles. Same old shitty little life.

And then things change. 

The Apocalypse decides to happen. And the paths and streets and lanes he used to stumble on drunk and angry and hurting, they begin branching out, away from the familiar and into the unknown.

His hell just got bigger than it ever was, crueler.

And he doesn't know it yet, but his backwards epiphany is already righting itself even though everything around him is falling apart. The higher power he's been doubting is even smiling now, rather excitedly, very affectionately, shaking His head at his impatience but glad they're here now.

That he's made it.

_My strong and beautiful boy, you're ready._

The quarry and losing his brother with nothing to hold on to but a hand. The disaster that was the CDC and looking for Sophia. Finding the farm and discovering that they've lost Sophia from the start.

Losing the farm.

_I want you to meet somebody little boy blue; it's little gray girl, or soon to be little gray girl._

Running, running. Running some more and the prison. Fighting, fighting. Fighting some more and finding his brother but losing him again.

This time for good.

_You'll need her, and she's going to need you too._

Family. Losing his family but one, just one. More running _it just never fucking ends_. The moonshiner's cabin. The funeral home. A blue-eyed girl with her white gold hair and _it's beautiful._

It _is_ beautiful.

And he doesn't know it yet, but he's been preparing himself to meet her all his life.

_Daryl Dixon my dear boy, meet Beth Greene._


End file.
